9. Crypto Scams & Real Estate Investing Strategies for Newbies in Australia

Foreign.

Welcome back to episode nine of the Ben and Berg show, your favorite MBA and college dropout where we share the lessons in building a global web three startup, crypto, investing and life. That sounds nice Berg. That's a good intro.

Oh mate, tip top.

Today we are talking about is the crypto bear market over? Should you invest in property, PR strategies for startups plus our normal stuff. Meal of the week, how to cook a perfect steak. Apparently Burke's knows how to cook a perfect steak. Meme of the week.

Absolutely.

Little gratitude of the week and as always, a little life update on what the hell we've been up to. Bergs we're restructuring the pod so we can give a bit more value because we waffle on sometimes get a bit too excited. So we're going to get straight into the value today and we're going to kick off with Is the crypto bear market over? Because we have had a pretty decent rally. Ethereum hit a bottom of around I think it hit around US$900 probably around within the last two months and Ethereum's back up to 1600 US. We've got Bitcoin back above 20,000 sort of chopping around between the 20,000 and 24,000 range. Currently sitting around 23,000 US we're still down from all time highs. Bitcoin and ether both down around 66% from their all time highs. That's my phone going off. Apologies.

Both down around 66 from all time high. So I mean we're still down a long way. Do we think the bear market's over? I mean the macro environment's still pretty bearish, they're continuing to rise interest rates, inflation's still pretty much out of control. But you know with the Ethereum merge coming up I think that's pretty, pretty bullish. That's priced in, potentially priced in already. The, the merge is coming up in September. Bitcoin halving is also a historical point that I look at or most people tend to look at is around the time when bitcoin has a bit of a rally that's less than two years to go. So we're on the downward trend downward slope halfway to go a little less than. But it's interesting Burgs like we may have already found a bottom or we're, you know, we're finding a bottom and then at the moment they're sort of accumulating right now. But I don't know, just something about it just I, I don't see enough bullish sentiment, you know in the macro Environment with, you know, rising energy costs, the war, inflation, there's so many, you know, impacting sort of figures and numbers coming up that just, it just doesn't seem like it's, we're going to be in a position to really rally off these prices. Maybe we do chop around here and we just scrape along the bottom for a little while. But yeah, it's, it's interesting. We've, we've, I mean, yeah, Bitcoin and Ether both rallied. Ethereum's up about 60 to 80% off its bottoms, which usually is a bit higher than a bear market or dead cat bounce. But yeah, I don't know. What do you think, man?

Man, I'm seeing that there has been a bit of relief, there's a bit of optimism going around, there's a few good projects happening. But if you look at macro kind of things where you know, interest rates are just crushing people, prices have gone up astronomically, wages are not keeping up with it. The Fed's taking a month off, so it'll be two months before the next kind of review. And people are really diving into like whenever the Fed from the States releases an outlook, man, they just, they're like, okay, here's the percentage. But then they'll look at, oh, what are they actually saying? What are the words? How can we interpret this, how can we forecast? And it is just absolutely bananas to see. But when I look at this, so I'm looking at all time high, coinindex.com which is an awesome site and if you look at this like Bitcoin and Ethereum to go from where we are now to all Time high is a 200% increase for both of those. Like that is just astronomical. And we've seen these market 4 year market cycles play out. That leads up to the hardening where you get this hive of activity around the hardening and then towards a bitcoin conference that happens earlier in the year, everything kind of tanks and I'm honestly just wondering if these market cycles are going to shorten. I don't, I think with the macro outlook and.

Even though we do have a lot of activity in crypto, I don't see this being a very quick and done kind of thing. I think it will be prolonged, there will be chopping around and I think it's just an awesome opportunity for everyone, if you've been thinking about it, to seriously look at crypto as an investment. Like we are super early in this space. It's only just ticked over a trillion dollars total market cap which is Insane to think and mate, I'm just enjoying this. It's the build period, it's the time when we get down, it's where all the innovation happens and when we capture that crest that happens towards the halving.

Yeah, I agree Bergs and I think a lot of people are in that same boat. So I'm looking at the one year HODL wave chart on my screen at the moment. So for listeners at home, basically what this is mapping is the percentage of bitcoin holders that have held bitcoin for longer than a year and that number's at all time highs at 65.8%. So 65.8% of all of the bitcoin that's out there in circulation right now is held by people that have not sold in over a year. That's an all time high number. Now that's really bullish. The other bullish factor I'm looking at is the number of stablecoins held on exchanges. So this is crypto investors that have rotated their, you know, maybe bitcoin eth, whatever it might be into USDC tether, something like that. And that number of stablecoins sitting on exchanges is also at an all time high which potentially could mean that that amount of capital is sitting there waiting to buy the bottom. There's a few other factors that may, you know, be the opposite to that sort of opinion but I'm looking at this going, you know what like yes, we're very bearish and well relatively bearish. I think we could chop around this period for a little while but it's a great time to accumulate. You know someone was asked the other day should I buy bitcoin? Right? You know, right now it's like well I think bitcoin, ethereum both undervalued if we're looking at a five time, five year time horizon. But I wouldn't be trying to like barrel in and buying everything at once. I'd always Recommend, you know, dollar cost averaging, split it over the next 8 to 12 weeks and just coming in and averaging your price in because who knows the reality is but over a 12 week you're going to get a nice average price.

And I, I like to think like if I've got some money, let's say it's over a four year time frame. For me personally I can't think of a better investment than bitcoin, I just have not found it listeners. If you found one, let me know, hit me up on Twitter and like honestly just listening to Michael Sailor him talk about it even he's been doing the rounds. The NIA podcast, not investment advice podcast. Have a listen to that one and hear the arguments for bitcoin. And really, if you think about it, I've heard bitcoin be explained as a Swiss bank and pretty much every coin or, you know, 100 millionth of a coin is space in that bank. So that is what you are buying and there's a fixed supply. And what are those people that are selling? What is going to have to happen for them? That 66 or 70% of people that have held for over a year for them to sell to you? Eventually there's going to be no space and it's kind of built in where the price is going to be very, very expensive in order to get in and have that sovereign money. And when you think about it, okay, yeah, you're going to take profits along the way. But what is bitcoin really? It's a bearer asset that means you hold it, you own it, you have it in your hands. It's like gold. You can put it in your safe if you want, bitcoin, but it's also digital, so you can move it around absolutely instantly, which is just crazy. To think globally by holding 12 or 24 words in your head. It's censorship resistant. You can put whatever you want on the blockchain and bitcoin will not say no. They will mine that shit and that will happen. And then if you think about it, it's borderless as well. Anyone can get into it and it's permissionless. Anyone can operate on that blockchain. When you combine all of those things where it's outside of government control and all of these things, if you have an asset class and you have space in that Swiss bank, are you really going to sell it? And if you do, where are you going to put that money where it's not at risk?

Totally agree. Burgs. And the way I look at it, as well as fiat currency versus Bitcoin, you know, why do we value the $10 note in our pocket? Because you and I trust or believe that that thing is worth $10. Can I take that to the bank and exchange that for gold anymore? Hell no. It's backed by fucking nothing. What is, what is bitcoin backed by? Well, the fact that we've got limited supply, we've got actual transaction volume, people are actually using it. We've got every transaction hard coded into the blockchain. We've got the ability for it to be used in transactions. I can go to some grocery stores and use it to actually buy and sell. I can receive goods with bitcoin. I know there's only going to be 21 million bitcoin ever created. How much money? How much $10 notes are going to be created in the world, unlimited. The government banks at any point can load up the printer and hit the print button and just print off more money. And that's exactly what's happened in the US of the last three years. They have printed trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, which increases the supply, which lowers the, the value or the ability or the purchasing power of that money. Bitcoin can never be changed. It's hard coded, it's hard coding the software. It's never going to change. It's deflationary, not inflationary.

100%. And that's the one thing to learn about bitcoin. Like, yeah, it's got this cool tech and it's got miners, it's got this awesome shit. Learn about the monetary policy. You can jump on the Collective Shift website, learn about it there. Honestly, learn about the monetary policy and why it makes sense, especially within the conditions that are happening now. And the scary thing is, like, even I didn't know this, but with fiat currencies, there was an astronomical number like.

Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of currencies that have existed over time and they've all blown up because they eventually break at some point. You can't have, you know, know, inflation all the time and everything keeping pace because it just doesn't make sense. They eventually break. They'll go to a standard. And we're starting to see that in quite a few countries.

You know, and everyone tends to think it's not kind of happening to us, But I even see this happening in Australia where our currency sucks against the US dollar. So if I have money that I need within the next year, I personally would be storing that in US dollars because I believe it's a much stronger currency than the Australian dollar. If you think about it, their economy's much larger. A lot of things like oil and everything are priced in US dollars. So you have that demand for US dollars. Whereas Australia, we're what, 25, 26 million people in the grand scheme of things? We, we honestly don't matter. We are a price taker, we are not a price maker.

Love that. I want to just take a little bit of a different angle here on the crypto side of things. If you're just starting out, please go to Collective Shift. Search Google Collective Shift. Security center. As you're starting out, I'm seeing so many newbies right now being caught up in scams and all sorts of very highly sophisticated, I guess programs and.

Really just scams trying to take your money. Right. So I'm going to list out a few key top tips for how to not lose your money in crypto as a newbie. Number one, do not ever share your recovery phrase. This is your password to your crypto wallet. It's like having your email and password. Would you give your password to the Internet? No. Do not give your seed phrase out to anyone. Do not store it online. Do not save it online. Keep it on a notepad and pen and put it in a safe. Number two, FA. Two factor authentication across all your accounts. Download Google Authenticator, get that shit and you have a second password to, you know, really stop hackers from getting into your account.

Number three, use hardware just with two fa.

Yep.

Yeah, hold on. With two fa mate. Don't, don't set it up with SMS because that she can get hacked so easily. People can port your number out and use that sms. Always do something you own. So Google Authenticator. And when you authenticate, it'll actually give you a code you can write down. So it'll be on your phone and it'll be active. But that code is a recovery phrase as well. So if your phone dies or it bricks, you can put it on another app or on your computer, you can type that code in again and away you go. So always opt for something that you own that is not stored online and not something that can be jacked simply like your phone.

Yeah, great call. We had a member burgs a little while ago that saved his seed phrase on Google Drive and then deleted his seed phrase, but it only went to his trash, which sits there for 30 days and had a hacker get into his Google Drive, went into his trash, found his seed phrase and drained all of his crypto. I think it was somewhere nearly $200,000 within minutes. Do not save anything online.

And, and this happens, we saw back in the day with your boy Ian Bellina with all his ICOs that happened to him, he stored in Evernote. So, and this, this is the thing people will look for these, these phrases. They'll look for 24 kind of or 12 random words. They'll look for wallet dat. They'll look for absolutely everything. So do not store that online and kind of air gap yourself as much as you can. And really the reason we say this is with those 12 or 24 words, you can restore that in any wallet. Let's say you've got a hardware wallet, you've got a ledger, you've got everything, heaps and heaps of security. But if you have those 24 words, I can just restore that on a software wallet and I can jack all your stuff instantly. So you really need to keep that safe and secure. And this is the challenge because one of the biggest things about crypto, and it's awesome, but it's a bearer asset. So there is no intermediary that holds your crypto unless you're on Coinbase or something like that. And you have the risk of them, you know, either going broke or taking your money. So if you hold it yourself, you have to be very, very serious about your security and know that, that you are taking that risk. You're not outsourcing it and passing on that risk to someone else.

Yeah, totally agree Bugs. The next one I want to talk about is a phishing scams. Phishing is basically, this is not fishing with an, fishing with a ph. So for those fishes out there, we're not going to catch a salmon. Phishing alert is basically hackers pretending to be someone or something or a website when it's not actually. So recently there was a huge crypto hack and the way the hackers got into the system they say sell about $450 million from a big crypto defi project. What happened was any a company was targeted in this attack. They got all the employees email addresses and all their names. The hacker came in and basically pretended to be the CEO. So had the name of the CEO, the email address look very similar to the CEOs. He sent an email to all of his employees saying hey Aaron, you know Ben here, da da da da da. We're updating our salaries. Congratulations, we're all getting a pay rise. Please see attached our PDF with the updated salaries with your information on it so you know how much you're going to be paid next, thank you or something like that. That was the way they targeted. So of course an employee, a junior employee looks that go, hell yeah, I want to know how much I'm getting paid. Clicks the PDF, downloads the PDF. It's not a real PDF. This is like a very well targeted virus. Within minutes the hackers got access to his computer, they got into the vaults of the crypto and drained nearly $450 million from this DeFi project.

Now that is one of the most sophisticated, I guess you know, phishing scams, but it might not be, you know, an employee of a company. It could be a website or I've seen when you type in an exchange, hackers outbidding on Google Ads, the actual official verified website with their own website. So it sits at the top with a very similar URL. If you're not, you know, not careful, you. You'll miss it. You click on the top link and it will take you to the. What looks like the exact same website, but it is a replica copy that you need to connect your metamask to get access. And as soon as you click that button, as soon as you try sign your transaction, as soon as you're given your password, it's all over. All your money's gone.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Only go to official sites and oh man, I've seen some wild social engineering videos. So there's one I'll post in the show notes. And there's this. There's this lady and she does this for a living. And she's talking to a guy and he's. She's like, okay, I'm going to call your phone company. I'll see if I can get your address, your email, your. And. And that's it. So she calls up and in the background she's got a laptop and the ba. There's just playing a baby cranker.

Like all this kind of stuff. And the guy picks up and he's like, hello, there's this baby crying in the background. She's like, oh, I'm wondering if you can help me. So immediately she's creating all this stress with this baby crying and like all like she's just completely manipulating this guy on the other side. She's like, oh, my husband's name is this. And I just need to change the Internet and oh, I don't have the password I need and this and the phone number and, and the guy. She's like, I can't remember. I can't remember the baby's crying. You have to help me. And then eventually he ends up changing the password, getting a date of birth, address, everything, just like that. Just with those details she can start opening bank accounts. It was wild. Like, it was like holy. Or like getting phone numbers. So then think about this. You've got all of your like details and numbers and, and an Internet account and password. You can then get like a phone. After you got your phone, you can then use that to two factor authenticate and then you can just keep going from there to open more and more stuff. You can reset emails, you can get scans of like passports if they've got an email, which everyone bloody does. It was so wild. And this thing, ha. These happens all the time. I've seen wild ones where even the.

What is it? The bookkeepers within an organization, they will get an email from the CEO saying, pay this invoice. And it looks legit and it's spoofed from their address and they just pay it. Like, they don't check. So literally this happens all day long. Even on the phone. I always get these calls. And it's for some calls, call center, and generally India's like, hello, sir, is this Aaron? And I'm like, I'm not answering that. Like, I'm from Citibank. I have this for you. And I'm like, bro, like. He's like, okay. I'm like, what is it? Can you tell me what it is? I can't tell you until I give you. It's like I authenticate you or some crap like that. And they're like, can you verify all this stuff? And I'm like, no, you called me. You're from a call center. I can hear people in the background. I don't know who you are. Tell me what this is about. And they won't tell me. So I just end up calling the direct Citibank number saying, hey, is this legit? Most of the time it is, but it's just their processes are really, really shit, right? And a lot of the time, like, never click a link. Like, if you see something in there, let's imagine you get a link from Collective Shift. Don't click on that. Go to Collective Shift IO and log in yourself and see if it's legit. If you get a letter in the mail or an email, don't do any of that stuff. Just call the company directly and check with them. Call their legit number on their website that you know is legit. Talk to a real person and just get it sorted. Because a lot of stuff can get nicked really quickly in the Internet space if you're not careful.

Yeah, you have to be very paranoid. I think in this space, bookmark those links. Go to their Twitter, have two or three touch points to verify you're actually the right address. So let's say I want to go to Coin Spot. Go to the Coin Spot website. Make sure it's the official link. By going to their Twitter, I'd go to their Facebook page. I'd look at maybe an email they've sent me before and verify it's all the same link. Go to the site where we've used it before. Ask a friend, go to collective shift, YouTube, it have multiple touch points to verify something. Don't just believe that you just land on the right site.

I do that as well. And I click on the secure icon, make sure they've got the certificate within the site. And even when I type in my 6 digit authenticator code, 9 times out of 10 I'll just type that in wrong just to see if it lets me through or if something happens and I'm like, is this a legit site? Even though I can read it because I'm that paranoid, right? Do you still have heart attacks when you plug in your hardware wallet? I don't.

Dude. Sweaty.

The UI is just so shit.

160P per minute. Yeah, it's, it's bad. It's very bad.

So it is crazy. Like, yeah, UI and crypto is mental. And this, this is a very strong signal. So if people like Ben and I that have been doing this for five years or so, we know how all this works, we teach this stuff. Like, I could set someone up from scratch to teach them how to do this and what to look out for if we're still having heart attacks when we're doing this stuff. That really explains how early we are in this space and how far we have to go just for the general public to be able to use this stuff. Even things like MetaMask, like I connect my hardware wallet to MetaMask, great. But then the MetaMask user interfaces change. And if I want to buy NFT on OpenSea, like I have to resign for each address for all those contracts. What are these fucking contracts? I'm not blind signing this. So then I have to go into the contract, read the contract on the blockchain to make sure it's the right contract. And then also have trust that there's nothing malicious within the contract. Right? It is just so, so insane. But yeah, if you're doing simple things like not connecting to websites, just buying bitcoin and sending it to a hardware wallet relatively easily and Ethereum get amongst that. But it just shows you how, how much we have to do in this space. This just to be usable, man.

Yeah, dude, we're so early, very early. So I want to wrap this up by saying, look, it sounds scary, it kind of is when you're first getting started. But honestly, go to Collective Shift, I o click on the Security Center. We have a full free resource on everything you need to know. How to buy, how to store, how to not get scammed. We've Got a scams Bible, YouTube videos. Yeah, like we've got a lot of stuff there that's just really going to help you get started. Make sure you've got a trusted party or trusted entity helping you.

Yeah, Huge shout out to Nick for hooking that up. Like this has been a vision of Nick's for quite a while. He's in the team. He's a researcher and analyst. Absolute base. The way he's put this together, it's just really easy to understand. It'll give you what you need to know. You can follow along. The tutorials are there as well. He'll teach you what to look out for and to keep you safe. Because we've all been scammed time and time again. When there's a newer scams, we get scammed. And you won't. You will be learning from us. So get amongst it, don't be scared. Just start off with 10 bucks or something like that in Bitcoin. Move it around and just see what this technology actually does. And even if you don't like it, that 10 bucks is well worth your learning.

Totally agree. Right, good segment to kick off with bergs. Let's roll into property. Should we be buying property right now?

Oh, mate, first of all, we were so serious in that segment, mate, I didn't give you any. I'm like, oh my God, market's so serious. Everyone's gonna be watching the pod going, who the are these guys? It's gonna be great. All right, let's get amongst it. Proper tie. Okay, so I'm gonna take this from an Australian perspective because it's what I know best. Should we be buying property? Should you be buying now? I always think it's a good time to buy property and I'll tell you why. And obviously, like there are market cycles, there's different cycles within cities, within suburbs, all this kind of stuff. You need to do your own research when you're getting in to make sure you get what you want. You're getting a good price. But let's talk about property more generally. So generally you either have an investment property or a primary place of residence. Let's go with primary place of residence first. So use my example. I own a home, or rather the bank owns it.

It's a house. I've got a mortgage against it and bought it probably 10 years ago. And why do I think property is good? Well, I think the basic things where in Australia we kind of like owning homes, we like DIY stuff, we like having a backyard. Fucking landlords are annoying. They don't fix your house. You can't drill stuff into the walls. It's just a really good feeling owning a home, right. Although the mortgage is very crushing, right? So that's something you need to consider. You can service it and really it is. The number one wealth generation vehicle in Australia is property. If you look at anyone that has money in Australia, a big chunk of it is going to be within property and there's quite a lot of reasons for that. Because there is a scarce supply of it, government doesn't release a lot of land. It's relatively good returns where you can rent it out. And look, you don't have to be very sophisticated. There's a saying that says even an idiot can collect the rent, right? So even if you've got like an idiot son or something in your family, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Now let's talk about this. What you can actually do with property, let's say it's an investment. You can invest in a property and someone will rent that from you. So let's say it costs you 500 grand and you get $500 a week. That's close enough to paying the mortgage, might be slightly under, but someone else is actually paying all that interest for you, which is phenomenal. That is just great. On top of that, you can claim things and of course always go to your tax professional for this. This is just general kind of chit chat about the things that are available. You can claim depreciation on them as well. So you can make improvements to the home. So if you bought like you know, a bunky home or something like that, you can replace the kitchen, you can replace other stuff and that is a depreciation expense against the income that you have from the property. So you can claim that against your tax, which is great. There's other things like negative gearing. Everyone always talks about this, but people don't really understand it. So really negative gearing is for every dollar I lose, I get 33 cents back. Which is pretty dumb. Like people like, oh, negative gearing is ruining the world. But you have gearing everywhere. Like if you borrow money to invest in shares, the percentage you pay on interest is tax deductible as well.

I'm going to jump in.

I mean it is a benefit.

Just to simplify this, sorry, can you explain how do you lose money investing in a property? How does it actually work? How does the, how does the negative gearing.

Okay, let's say by Mitt. Yeah.

How do you get to negative gearing.

Yep. So let's say you buy a million dollar property and you get a hundred thousand dollars. Ten percent is quite a lot. Yeah, let's say 100 grand, why not round figures per year in rent, but the interest and what you have to pay back is 150 grand, so there's a 50 grand deficit there. So of that 50 grand, if your marginal tax rate is 33%, you can then claim that because it's an interest expense, it's called a tax shield.

Awesome.

Right? And that's just, that's just the basic way that I work. So you're losing money. So really the reason people do that is they're willing to lose money short term in the hopes that it just, you get capital growth and it goes up long term.

Makes sense.

And if that's the game that people.

Play, if you're looking to buy your first property bugs, what sort of percentage deposit would you be thinking? You know, again not financial advice, but like, are you a component of like just getting, if it's 2%, just get it in, get to get the money and get property. Yeah.

So I've had this conversation with so many of my friends, they're like, I need to save up 20% so I don't pay lenders mortgage insurance. And I turn around and I say, you're a fucking idiot. And then I pull out the pen and paper and I do the sums in front of them. And honestly, if you're talking, let's say a million dollar property to save up 200 grand will take you so much longer than saying paying say 5% so you don't have to save up another 150 grand. You put in your 50 grand, you get a loan for that amount and you capitalize that lender's mortgage insurance on top of the loan and literally you just need to do this sum. So million dollar property and at 5%, your interest rate might be slightly higher then at 20% and then you add your lenders mortgage insurance on top, which is 3%, 4%, something like that. Do that sum on what you're actually paying out month by month and it works out to be like 20, 30 bucks more. Something like incredibly small. It was a very, very small amount. It's probably more than $20 or $30. But in the time that the property market actually moves and the time you could be spending in that home and getting that dividend every single day, it is absolutely worth capitalizing that on the loan. And do those sums with your mortgage broker. I honestly don't know Anyone that wouldn't pay the least amount and capitalize that.

Unless I've got an astronomical amount of money or they don't understand finance. Like, honestly, that is the thing.

And I was gonna add. I'm just firing up questions here, man. So what about, what about from an income perspective like you, you know, your ability to pay down? Okay, well, let's say so tenants is obviously going to help you pay to that loan. I'm thinking interest rates. So right now we're going through this period where we've got the Fed and the Australia just, you know, rising interest rates. What's your perspective on that? Is that just not even a really concern as long as your rent, renters are covering it? Obviously this is different. If this is your primary, primary house of residence. Like if you're living in the property and you're not having, you know, you don't have tenants to help pay the rent. Well, then that's a different, this is a different discussion. If you've got tenants in a property that's paying it down. This is a, this is an investment property. Different conversation. Like, what's your perspective on the investment side of things? With interest rates going up, I assume that's less of a problem.

Okay, so, yeah, definitely. So we'll do this in two areas, primary place of residence and investment property. Primary place of residence. So when we're talking about, what we're talking about here is called serviceability. Am I able to pay that loan back? And this is something you need to consider. I've seen a lot of my friends go absolutely balls deep and buy, you know, 1.2, $1.3 million properties just straight off the bat, borrowing the max amount that they can. And they do not think about serviceability. So they haven't thought, if interest rates go up and my repayments go up, can I pay that? They haven't thought in a few years. If I get married, I'm going to have a lot more expenses. Also, if I have a child and my wife or myself would want to take some time off work, can I still afford this loan? That is something you need to do up front. And I would encourage people to not over capitalize on their homes because that becomes a mausoleum. It is literally a tomb you will die in. You do not need to spend all like insane amounts of money on your home. Buy something you need that, that meets the majority of your requirements and start paying it off. And you will have a freedom that most people don't know. Like you will have, like if you're Able to take six months off work and not worry about your mortgage because your mortgage is so much less. These are the things that you need to consider. You need to consider, if mortgage rates go up 2%, 3%, 5%, what does that put me in? Can I still pay it? If I can't, what do I need to do to be able to pay it? Do I need a better paying job? Do I need a second job? Does my wife have to go back to work? Work? Map all those things out and see if you're willing to make those sacrifices because they can happen. Now, if you've got an investment property, generally you're a bit better off because number one, you'll probably already have a roof over your head or you'll be living with your folks or you know, you'll be somewhere with that property. You can pass on those rate increases to your tenants. You'll also be claiming a tax shield on that if it goes too high. And then you also have the option of liquidating the property and selling it. So you're in a much better position there. Keep in mind that houses aren't liquid. You can't just sell them instantly. Although this market's pretty good because people want to live in Australia. Covid was really good over here and really the reason I'm, I'm bullish on property is because if we think about this from, you know, 10,000 foot view, majority of Australia's wealth is in property. Why rich people have property. Everyone wants to own a house. And in your superannuation a big chunk of that is going to be dedicated to property. So what does the government need to look out for? Fucking property. So property prices tank, everyone loses their a big, let's say probably prices go down 50% which everyone is claiming that's going to happen. I haven't seen it. I mean, hey, it can happen over time, but it's very unlikely. So let's say it goes down 50%. First of all, think about what would have to happen for that to happen. Let's just say it's happened. Zombie apocalypse, why not? Let's go. What is the government going to have to do? Soup has gone down. People won't be able, the retirees won't be able to live. They'll have to pay out the pension. People are going to lose their homes because they can't pay the bank. They're going to lose their investment properties. That's going to be mental. What's the government going to do? Do you think they're going to give out Handouts. Do you think they're going to do all that kind of stuff? No, they're going to prop up the property market. They're going to, they're going to bail you out, they're going to give you cash, they're going to subsidize a whole bunch of stuff, have a huge bunch of incentives in order to prop up that market. And we've seen this previously. And one thing I'll probably end on is property is really not about property. Like it can be where you can get a house, you can subdivide it, you can put a granny flat there, you can land bank, you can do heaps of stuff, but is 100% about finance and the this is what people need to understand. So let's say I've got a half million dollar home, right, and I'm slowly paying that off and paying it off. Let's say I'm amazing and I pay off 100 grand and my property has increased in price to 600,000 so it's now worth 600 and I paid off 100. There's 200 grand worth of equity in there. So the bank will actually allow you to redraw that equity as a debt facility. And then you can take that, just generally like 80% of it. So you don't pay mortgage insurance on that thing. 80%, you can take that and you can invest in another property, you can invest in shares, you can invest wherever you want. It's called debt recycling. And then from your shares or your property, the income that that generates, you can put that back into your primary place of residence. So this is the magic of property. You are turning with your home. Your interest rate on your house, that is non deductible debt. You are taking that and converting it to tax deductible debt. So you're already getting at least a 30% benefit, 40 or 50% if you're a high income earner on that debt. And that just accelerates your wealth. People are super afraid to use debt to accelerate their wealth, but they need to understand debt. And this is how rich people get rich. Don't just use the money that you have, use other people's money and make sure it's within your risk profile. And always, you know, talk to your team of financial advisors when you're doing this kind of thing. But if you can leverage that debt to create more wealth, that is honestly the fast path and it is a well trodden path.

Oh, maybe I'm buying property.

What about you mate? Are you going to Buy any problems.

I might be buying property, might be buying property now. Burgs. Hell, you've got me bullish, man.

It is, honestly, Ben, it is, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Seriously, like there are so many benefits to owning it, living in it, the finance benefits. It is absolutely incredible.

Yeah, no, I, I, it is, yes.

So I love property. There you go.

No, no, it's definitely on the roadmap for me. I, I think it's something I tend to really have to try and understand something before I buy it. That was the same as bitcoin. Took me six months to really understand it before I bought in. And I was close to looking at buying a property not that long ago. Probably 12 to 24 months ago, I went to the, you know, I was getting, getting the finance sorted, starting to look at like getting an investment property and was spending a lot of time consuming a lot of stuff about property, like listening to podcasts, reading books, speaking to you about it. I was reading a lot, like really getting my hands in the weeds. And then a few things change and I got caught up and got busy back into crypto and business, so sort of stopped doing it. But yeah, I'll definitely buy a property at some stage in the future. But for me I think it's about like anything, understanding what you're doing first and, and, and really knowing and having the conviction before doing it. Because if I don't have conviction and I'm not really sure what I'm doing, I'm going to lose out.

Yeah. And it's, it's a long term game as well. And here's, here's a wild thing, right? Unless you're highly specialized and you're modifying properties and renovating them and doing all that kind of stuff and building. Here's what's wild. Primary places of residence are tax exempt. So I can live in this house and let's say over the next 30 years it goes from half a million to 1.5 million. I can sell that and pay no tax.

Yeah, it's sick.

Isn't that fucking wild? And here's what's even more wild. I'm pretty sure it's around six months. So let's say I live here and I have an investment property. If it's within, I think it's within six years, I can go and live in that property for six months, claim that as my primary place of residence, and please look this up on the ATO website, don't take my word for it. And that becomes my primary place of residence. That was an investment property. I can then sell it. And that is tax free. That's.

That's pretty fucking cool.

That's fucking cool.

And then use that debt recycling feature to buy more crypto.

That's. Well, that's it. So this, this is the thing. Like I use debt recycling for my investments. It is just the way to do it. And then I run that through a trust. So if you want to do, if you want to know more about this, there's a brilliant podcast by a guy called Terry White. He's super nerdy, but it's called the structuring podcast. He's only got about 20 episodes and they're five minutes each. Listen to those and honestly, simple, simple tips on how to think about these things. Engage him. Honestly. I can recommend him as a mortgage broker. And he's also a lawyer and a tax.

Tax lawyer. Yeah. And another, another website is propertychat.com head over there. These guys have meetups, they talk about property. They're big nerds. And honestly, it is really, really simple stuff that's tried and tested. It's been done for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And it is a good wealth generation vehicle. Something you should definitely consider.

Okay, I'm bullish. Let's talk.

Let'S talk PR burgs. Let's go back to startup. So I want to talk PR strategies for startups. And the reason why we're talking about this is because I've just been through it the last little while and you've got some tips, takeaways, thoughts, lessons learned. So PR for those at home, they don't know what that is. PR is public relations. It's basically what you see in the media. You've got two types of public relations. You've got paid and organic. Paid is when you basically go to a new site and you have this story you want to run and you pay them to put it up on their site. Now, you know, you could go to Cointelegraph or some of the major crypto sites. You could be paying anywhere between 10 and $20,000 for them to, you know, put your article up there, which is a lot of money. Right? On the organic side.

There'S a lot of sites out there that will take your press release or your story, but usually those ones that take any sort of story. There's sort of different tiers of PR and media. You've got really low level PR or media sites that are just pumping out insane amounts of volume just to get like links and viewerships. That's their model and they sell advertising. Then you've got higher, more premium sites like in Australia, the AFR. In crypto you've got, you know, CoinDesk, TechCrunch, Business Insider. Those sort of players play on much more of a brand building perspective. They have high quality journalists, high quality stories and they're known for having great stories and then get printed in magazines, newspapers, etc. So you've got different ranges of PR sites. So if you go back to why you want pr, well there's really, there's a few different reasons why you might want pr. One is for the SEO traffic and linkability. So SEO is search engine optimization. You might want your business to own more of the Google search results for your business or keywords. So for example, ask Collective Shift. We wanted, there was a business in the US that was called Collective Shift. Org or something. We wanted to own page one and page two of all Google searches across the world for Collective Shift. So what we did, we set out on a strategy to get as many articles in lower quality media sites as possible to own those search rankings. Because we will come up on Google, even on the lower tier sites we just had to pump out volume. So for four months we push out a lot of stories. Now we own page one and page two of searches predominantly. But that's a lot of like, that's not really going to bring you new, you know, customers or investors straight away. That's more of just like a, you know, we're going to own the front door of the searches as you move up the ladder and you want some high tier stuff. So recently we're, you know, at the moment we're raising our, we're raising our seed round. We had one of the largest family offices in Australia. Just come on as an investor, the Smorgan family, really exciting stuff. It was a great story. So for us to get that story, we wanted that on the pinnacle, the highest tier new site in Australia for business and that is the afr, the Australian Financial Review. So what we did is we, there's a guy I was introduced to, his name's Drew and he is a PR manager. Basically he runs a boutique PR firm. Now the difference here, if you're looking at hiring a PR firm, there's different types of PR firms. So you've got, you've got big organizations that have lots and lots of people that try and like have relationships and put out your, your story or you've got more boutique guys like Drew. Now the difference is, is that a lot of the Bigger entities.

I love how you say boutique instead of boutique.

Is it Tasmanian boutique?

Bo take mate, get fucked, mate.

A lot of the bigot.

The PR is all about, PR is all about relationships. You need to know the journalists to get the story. When you have a bigger company, a lot of the people in those bigger, the PR people in those big companies don't have the relationship so they're just selling you sort of the dream and then they, what they do, they take your story and they just blast it to everyone and just fucking hope for the best. Now the problem with that is that these bigger media companies want exclusives. They don't want to run stories that other people have ran before. This is one thing I've learned. If you just take your story and just go, let's just send it to fucking 4,000 different sites. You're going to get all the lower tier ones. You have to position your story to the, to the entities that you want that story to be run by. And you need to, you need to give them something of value and that is an exclusive to them. If they get the exclusive, they get a story that no one else has heard before. It's going to get all the clicks, the viewers and then they get to sell advertisements. That's the whole model. So we pitch the AFR for this story. They took the story, we ran the exclusive. It got massive amounts of awareness. It was huge. It was absolutely hit out of the park. Was page 10 on the front page of the paper, page 10 on the AFR. Unbelievable. Now when we went and pitched that same story to, oh, Berg's gonna share the screen. There it is there. Look at that Hampson fella.

There you go. Look at that, look at that. Beautiful.

Look at that.

And I like, I like what you said there as well. It's not a shotgun blast, it's just a sniper. You're aiming for one thing, one area, one audience, one publication and it's a very high quality specific thing and it lands and when it does, It's a beautiful 100.

This went everywhere. This, like, this was seen by a lot of people. The PR agent Drew came back and said companies with the AFR specifically in Australia would be asking and fighting for years to get this sort of exposure. So this was like unbelievable. Absolutely out of the park. Amazing. Really exciting stuff. Obviously the story was pretty cool with the, you know, the sporting coming on board, but oh yeah, how wild.

It's so awesome to have a family like that on board and investing and believing in us. Lad, you dropped me a message when it actually was a phone call and you were telling me, you're like, oh, my God, this is happening. Tell me about what you had to do and what the journey was to actually get this done. Because it is hilarious. It's classic Ben style. Nothing's easy with him. It's always hectic.

So we pitch this on Thursday night. Within an hour or two hours, I got a call from juror to say they're running the story tomorrow. Start preparing. And whenever you're doing pr, like, this is an interview, so you usually need to prepare for, like, the worst question. So what I did is I listed out some of the worst questions I could get. Like, sort of difficult curly questions and how you respond. I start preparing by the next day. They wanted to do the interview by 10am So I was at a cafe and they wanted me to fly to Melbourne to do a photo shoot. It had to happen today. I was like, can't it happen tomorrow? I've got to fly to the Gold Coast. No, it's got to be in the paper on the Saturday edition. They wanted in the biggest, like, edition of the paper. There's like, the interviews happening at 10am I was at the cafe then. They're like, you need to be in Melbourne within, like, three hours. And I was like, I'm sitting in a cafe in Launceston. I'm like, what? So, right, I was on the phone today. We booked flights to Melbourne. Cost me a thousand dollars. I went and got a haircut. I was doing media training in the hairdresser. These guys blow drying my hair while I'm doing media training with the PR guy, Drew. He's drilling me with questions and I'm trying to answer questions while I'm getting my fucking hair cut. Finish the call, drive home. It's pissing down with rain. Get home, two minutes to spare. Sitting from my computer, 30 minute interview, packed up, was about to go to Melbourne. Then they're like, no, don't go to Melbourne. We just found a photo of you. We're going to use that. You don't need to go to Melbourne anymore. So we spent a thousand dollars on flights.

He's like, yeah, he told me. He's like, oh, I've got a fly to Melbourne. I'm gonna be there for 30 minutes. We're gonna do the interview and they're gonna take photos of me. I'm like, mate, what the fuck kind of life is this? Like.

You will choose the most hectic way to do something. And if someone goes, here's the most Fucked up way. I guarantee no one will ever do it. You'd be like, I mean, let's go.

My strategy is I'll make it happen. I said to Drew, I said, I'll just make it happen, mate. If I need to be somewhere, if this is gonna. That's really what you got to do. Sometimes it's just. Just like, if you've got an opportunity, you're just going to make it happen. Like, it just. There's no other choice, right? It just is what it is.

Yeah. And. And I heard that, and I was like, okay, this is cool. But how I knew it was serious was when you sent me a text and you're like, oh, man, can you think of some hairy questions that I could get asked? And I'm like, oh, game on. I'm like, licking my lips, rub my hands, going off. I'm gonna tear him to shreds. So I did all the usual stuff about the business, but then I was like, you know, ripping him about being young, which is legit, right? You know, you're a young guy. What makes you think you can do all this stuff? What about the history of the business? What about this? What about that? And I think I ripped into a bit as well. It's like, what about your face? What about being a dog? You know, just the usual stuff. But no, but the serious. On a serious note, the part was Ben came back and he goes, that's great. It's never as serious as you make up in your own head. Which I thought was just amazing self awareness and reflection on your part. Where I'd be my pants if the AFR wanted to interview me. Like, with media people, I'm like, they're gonna get me. I'm gonna get got. I'm gonna be up. This is gonna be the story of my life. They're gonna put it on my gravestone. And then you actually had the awareness to be like, okay, you know, I'll ask a range of people and get the training and all this kind of stuff on what could happen. And I went for your neck. I went hard in that. And I was like, look, if I was a media person, this is how I would rip you to shreds. And you just replied and you're like, awesome. It's never as bad as you think because you had all those bases covered.

Preparation. I think I've been here before. Like, I've had. I've had some sort of curly media before. And I think.

The best of best comment or advice ever got. I can't Remember who said this once in business is. Business is never as good as what you think and it's never as bad as what you think in the moment. So like I, I've really taken that across the board and tried to remember that in moments of euphoricness or when great things are happening, it's always a reminder of like hey, things are great, but then it's probably not as great as what I think right now. Same on the way down. Things are pretty bad, but they're not as bad as probably what I think because I'm in the moment. As things, times goes on, it sort of flattens out. So if you can just bring in that volatility and live in the, in the middle, I think that's a, I think it's one of the best advice I've ever got.

I think that's just really good life advice. Like things are never as bad as you think and they're never really as good as you think. And it comes back to we don't see things as the way they are. We see them as we are with all our thoughts in our head and all this kind of stuff. But that's one version of reality compared to 8 billion on the planet. People will just not see the things that you do. They won't have the information you do, the experience experience that you've had, the things that you've gone through. It is never as bad as you think.

Now I'm going to wrap up the PR so we can get into the fun stuff in saying that. What the other thing is I've learned is you can lose a lot of money in pr. You're going to get per firms, they're going to give you like ten thousand dollar retainers and all this sort of stuff. I'll give you one tip. This guy Drew that I work with, he's. I have one story with him, it's a one off payment and then he tells me to get because my story is done, he moves to the next person. The reality is companies and people just don't have that many great stories. And if you sign up for this massive long retainer, you're probably just paying the guys at the top to get your story out there on some sort of random site. I think PR has a great, you know, PR is great and I think, you know, if done well and executed can bring in a lot of business and authority. But I think just be careful and strategic to not just burn a bunch of money putting your sort of articles out where no one's really reading them. That'd be my tip for advice.

Oh, yeah. So you stitch me after this. So. All right. One of my first things when I came into this company, Ben was like, oh, I'm too busy, man. Can you take this for me? And it was a media person, and they wanted. They were charging us all this money, and I was like, well, what are you giving us? And like, oh, we'll put you here. We'll do this, we'll do that. And I'm like, we'll put you in front of investors. I'm like, yeah. How many investors do they invest? How much do they invest? What areas are they in? And this guy couldn't answer any of these questions. It was just literally, they've put you through a funnel. He's a sales guy. They'll just blast you out, and you'll get pretty much nothing in return. And it was a big sum of money as well. And then you go to experts like Drew, absolute surgeon, just straight in there, does what he needs to do, right? Job done. And we couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. Like, it was just. Because you never quite know until it's published, right? And then we got it. And Ben. Ben calls me up. So he calls me up, right? And he goes, oh, begs man bags. And I'm like, hey, man, what's going on? This is Friday night, okay? So I'm super tired. I've had a massive week. I've had a product launch. Ben's just like, wear me to the bone. And then, so I've just started Friday night. I've got my barbecue. I've just lit up. I've got my fire pit lit up, and I'm about to start cooking. I'm like, I'm kind of coming down with a cold. I've got a cold at the moment. I'm like, what's going on, man? You're like, man, just Google collector shift. Google collection shift, mate. And, like, I Google it. And I'm like, oh, it's an AFR article. He's like, click on it, man. Click on it. So I click on it. It's like, just read it, mate. Read it, mate. Like. Like, I'm like, reading it out. And, like, I'm so tired. And he's like, oh, look under Luke Smorgan. See what he said about the company, mate? As I start reading, I was like, holy. And it's so funny because, like, my family's in the back, my neighbors are really close, and I'm just swearing, going, oh, my God, it's like, it's big. Like you know, show me the money. Like he's saying like yelling kind of moment thing. It was just phenomenal. Like after the, you know, the last year that the business has had to have such a great result like this and to be able to share in this with the team and have that legitimacy in a publication like that and that article is actually a hundred percent truthful. And then having someone like Luke Smorgan backing us is just unbelievable. The feeling and energy and motivation that that has given us and the team.

That'S the best thing about business. I think those wins, you're going to have the ups and downs but the wins, the confidence, camaraderie, being able to call you and just share that moment. I was like four minutes on a Friday afternoon you were cooked. I got off to the plane, I'm like, you know, don't even know where I am. I like I'm gonna share this with Bergs. It's just, it's the best feeling. It's so much fun.

That's awesome. Where are you now anyway? Are you in Tasmania?

I'm on the Gold Coast. I'm up in Broad Beach.

Jesus. Why?

I'm in Airbnb. Some guys are up here for. They're playing poker and I was like, oh, Gold coast, what's the weather out there like? I was like, oh, 24, 25 degrees. Where are you staying? Show me photos.

Pool, spa.

Huge Airbnb on the water. It's like, okay, I'm coming with you. So now I'm working from the Airbnb up in the Gold coast and then I've got a few meetings. I got a few meetings and stuff I've got to attend to and catching up with the.

Okay, so.

In the corporate world we call this a junket where you want to go on a trip and then you just bullshit to everyone. They got your meetings and you got a conference in and around. What's actually happening? Just a junkin trip. Playing poker with the boys, singing a few cold ones actually mate, like, honestly with the year you've had, you bloody deserve it, mate. I'm sorry, you still working Mad?

Flat out. But then, you know, a few beers of the evening makes a bit more fun.

Nice. Are you losing poker?

Man? I play the low level stuff. These guys are playing the main event. I mean like the, the lowest level. Yeah, it's good for. I like, I like. The problem is I like poker but I'm no good at it. So like I just play the, the Lowest, lowest tier games where I can have a few beers and enjoy myself without paying too much money.

So good. So good. All right, man, we're gonna jump into meme of the week, the meal of the week, and then I'll teach you guys how to cook the perfect steak. So this is my meme of the week, and this absolutely has had me in stitches. This one is just text. So, podcast listeners, you're. You're on podcast listeners, you're on the same wavelengths. Everyone else, this is nicknames for my colleagues at work. So this is hilarious. The wicket keeper puts on gloves and stands back. Absolutely hilarious. Harvey Norman. Three years and no interest. Oh, man, I met so many of those in government. Jesus Christ. All right, at work, we've got the sensor light only works if someone walks past, which is so good. So good. Noodles. All jobs take two minutes, so I think I'm very guilty of this always. Ben. So. So is one of one of our developers, like, oh, yeah, no time at all. Oh, so good. The. The blister appears when the hard work is done. How good? You've got that guy that shows up at the end that takes all the credit. You got the show bag, which is just full of shit.

The lantern not very bright and has to be carried. Amazing. Yeah. The deck chair always folds under pressure. Oh, mate, I know a few of those.

This is you, mate.

Oh, this is brutal. Perth, three hours behind everyone else. Oh, thanks, mate. Here I am creating the future. I'm three hours behind everyone else, mate. Mate, I wake up later than you and I'm still in the future, mate. That's how good I am. Then we've. Then we've got the G spot you can never find here.

So good. The bush ranger holds everyone up. Oh, mate, seriously, in government, everyone is a bush ranger. They're like, what about risk? What about governance? What about this? I'm like, how about we just try this on a small scale and actually answer those questions? Oh, no, we can't do that. So crazy. The wheelbarrow only works when he's pushed. So good. So good. The limo carries about eight people. That's definitely me for sure. No doubt about it.

And then the last one we've got is cordless. Charges all night, but only works for two hours.

Okay, quickly.

That is the meme of the week. I love.

I'm gonna print it out back up again. Let's name this. Name one for each other.

Who.

Who are you? Who am I? You go first.

All right.

Your name, mate.

What?

Which.

What?

She came on.

Oh, Mate, you're. You're definitely the blister appears when the hard work is done.

No, I was just say, you're the show full of.

No, no, to be honest.

I reckon you're definitely the G spot, cuz I can never find you and I don't know where you are.

You don't fold under pressure. Oh, you're. You're half a lantern. So you're not very bright, but you don't really need to be carried, right?

And then, yeah, you do. You're definitely the definitely G spot, mate. But no, you're pretty. You're pretty good. Oh, you're on your noodles. You're definitely noodles. You think everything takes two minutes. So me, we're on a call this morning, right? And I've literally. Ben's given me like 50 things to make and he's giving me 12 months to do it. I'll probably do it in three because I'm a dead set legend. But then he calls me up, he's like, oh, mate, I've realized we need this. I won't say what the thing is because it's a product. Oh. And I've just seen it over there and I'm worried about this. Oh, we could just smash it out and it'd be amazing. And then we can build habits and then we can have this and then we can have that. I'm like, motherfuck. Like I'm crook. That's like shitloads of work. And he's like, ah, it'd be like two minutes. We've got this team, we can swell into them, we can just make it, mate. Oh, God. You're definitely Noodles. I'm calling you from now on, son. You all right?

So you're only working when someone walks past.

Get.

First of all, first of all, I work remotely, right?

Everything is always done.

Since. Since you. Since you bailed out and you're actually doing a CEO role. Like, the teams are now singing. They're amazing because I jumped in and I did the work that you should have been doing.

Oh, here we go. He reckons he's the limo. Reckons he's carrying eight people. But he's just a show bag because he's full of.

No, I'm not.

I'm not carrying. I'm not carrying them. I think maybe, maybe I'm just, you know, driving them around. They're helping out. They do. It's like a F1 teammate. They all jump out, they do the tire changes, they do everything, mate, but.

They just need that epic leader, absolute Absolute show bag. Right, I'm Noodles.

Oh, amazing, amazing. Well done, Noodles. All right, should we jump into meal of the week? All right, so I'll start mine off with a bit of a story and then I'll load it up. So when Ben called me on the Friday night, I was cooking up a Barbie and I've been excited about this one for a while. So a while ago I bought some yakiniku. Do you know what that is?

No, I've got no idea. It's basically small little pieces of beef and like Japanese cook it up over a grill. Amazing stuff. Like generally it's like rib meat or really tender meat where it's nice marbled fat and they're just small pieces and you have it with rice and whatever. So I got that out, got my Weber out, put the charcoal on, cooked it over that, had a glass of red wine. The fire was going in the back, got. Got some vegetables. So I had some broccoli, some red capsicum, green capsicum, and had tomatoes and just put the capsicum on till it was like black and it just tasted so sweet and delicious. The tomatoes blistered up. And then had the broccoli as well. Put that over rice with soy sauce and the beautiful beef and made fresh off the grill. This is incredible. And of course, in true Berg style, I didn't take any photos, but this was the gift. Kept on giving, mate.

So.

So I cooked up a decent chunk of this and then it went into the next meal. Sounds like the next morning I woke up and I cooked myself.

Oh, here we go.

This is barbecue, mate. It keeps on giving.

So this is the omelette that I cooked the next day. Right. So, you know, and keep in mind, like, I was cooked, I was full of wine, I was hungover. Omelette doesn't look too great, but you can just see a little bit inside. And it's just got that yummy beef in there and it's got the tomato, it's got a bit of broccoli and capsicum and this is just delicious. You've got the beautiful smoky flavors across it, nice umami and sweetness and bitterness. And then you've got the egg that's like wrapped in it, a bit of cheese as well. So I think I used some pecorino in there, which is delicious. I folded it back and this is what it looked like inside where you've just got this amazing beef. And just look at that tomato, how it's just like it's blistered on the top and it just Pops in your mouth and you've got the broccoli in there. And this was just absolutely delicious.

Here we go. But there's more.

So the next day, yeah, the next day we ordered Uber Eats cuz we were all sick on the Sunday and I ordered. Marissa ordered Thai food and I had like Ban Me, which is like a roll with stuff in it, but it wasn't enough. And I thought, I've got some good rolls, I can make one of these myself. So this is what I made some. This is my version of a barmi. It doesn't have like everything in it, but I had all of that lovely beef in there. I had shitloads of like cucumber. So I chopped that up, put some like salt, pepper, lemon through it. And look at that lad over some nice beautiful sourdough. Oh, mate, it was just unbelievable. This is definitely my meal of the week. And that's hot sauce, man. That's just chili sauce. So whenever you go to kebab shop and you have chili sauce on it, it's that master foods chili sauce. And it just tastes so good. This thing was just like, you bite into this and the juice from the meat just comes out and you taste like that umami flavor. And then you have like all the juices just go into the bread. And I put like shitloads of butter on there as well. And then you get the crunch and the freshness and the acidity of the cucumber. I'm pretty sure I put apple cider vinegar in there as well. And it was just. Oh, incredible. I went to bed.

That is my meal of the week if I had to rate this.

All right, there's three meals here. The original yakiniku meal, nine out of ten, mate, I would make that every Friday. This is going to be my Friday ritual. I'm going to knock off and I'm going to start the fire pit outside. I'm going to start my Weber. I'm going to have the family out there. I'm going to cook up a barbecue, have a glass of wine, stare at the fire, eat amazing food and just disconnect. So that meal would be like a 9 out of 10. Mate, that was just incredible. Probably got a bit fancy with some herbs and spots, spices. Next time, the omelette, I'll probably give it, oh, 8 out of 10. It hit a lot of areas, but I didn't cook it that well. And then this thing, I would give this eight and a half out of 10 because if I wanted to go really fancy, I Should have put in, you know, maybe some coriander, some mint, slice up some chili, put it through. But I was crooked and I couldn't be bothered with all that. So I just put the sauce in. There you go. Meal of the week.

The gift that keeps on Twitter bio mate.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Say that the. The gift show bag. The gift that keeps on giving.

Okay, I'll be a little bit of a different one this week. Wheat Bergs an insight to the startup. Found a life.

All right, let's go son.

Oh, here we go.

This could be anything guys.

Get ready right. A little bit different this time Bergs. Now I should have taken a photo of the steak as my God, I had the New York strike trip at this. This was a restaurant last night on the Gold Coast. It's called Thunderdome. I think it's called Thunderdome. I had this beautiful Thunderdome. 400 gram New York strip with a cider greens. And this strip came out cooked at medium. Comes out no sauce. Cuz I think dirty old sauce just ruins a steak. Like I just want the clean cut. Steak comes out.

Yes. Sauce if you have it should be on the side. You should cut your steak and dip it in the sauce.

Like this thing's gonna be good. It was like 58, like it was a decent cut. It's like 400 grams New York strip. Coming from New York I'm like they had, they only eat New York strips over there and it's so good. Try the New York strip. Cut it in half and it just starts to ooze out this like sauces and juices. Perfectly cooked. And we mix this with a bottle of 100 and something. I think I don't know what it was. I actually don't know why I didn't order it. It was about $105 for the bottle. Pinot red it was from, I think it was from South Australia. Comes in a bottle. No shit. Within about 15 minutes we had to order another one. This was one of the best wines I've ever drank and I can't even remember what it was called. I have to ask my mate. Just the smoothness of this tasted. Tasted like velvet. Tasted just like lolly water. You know when you swirl around, have a bit of a smell, you sip it and with a nice cut of steel steak. Oh my goodness, it was the best combo. I wish I had a copy of the steak because you know the combination together was like we're talking about it for you know, the next 24 hours. How good it was this was like a 9.6. Like, this was up there. The combination of the great glass of red with like, just a sick steak, mate. You cannot go wrong.

Yep.

We'Re doing that this Saturday, actually. So some of my friends are coming over. We're doing steak and wine. We get out our very, very fancy wine from Margaret river and pair it with steak. So, look, I'm just going to jump straight in and I'm going to go through to how to cook the perfect steak. We're going to do this on a Weber, but I'll also explain how to do it in your oven or sous vide as well. So here we go. Here's the only photo I could actually find of me cooking a steak, like, from this kind of thing. I've got heaps of other ones that will come up in a sec, but. So here's. Here's the thing. Get your Weber, really easy to do. Put your charcoal on one side so you can see in this photo all the charcoals on one side of the grill. For this one, I've just got some vegetables in a tray because, hey, I felt like veggies. And this is a beautiful bone in ribeye. It's about 2 inches thick. And I've rubbed it with what looks like hardcore carnivore. So you can put any kind of rub on there. Always do. The Holy trinity. Salt, pepper, garlic. And this is the thing. Charcoal on one side. You can literally. You don't have to rest your steak. You can take it out of the fridge if you want, rest it if you want, put it on the other side of the grill and then put the lid on top. And you want to. On the top of your Weber, where you have the little vent, you want to put the vent fully open on top of your meat. So what that does, all the air comes underneath the Weber, goes through the charcoal and blows it over the meat. If you want to smoke your steak or a bigger cut, you absolutely can. Just put your smoking wood in there and away you go. This will take anywhere, depending on how thick your cut is, from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. And the only thing you need is a thermometer that you can poke into your steak and check the internal temperature. So you poke that into your steak and you probably for medium rare, you probably want it around 50 degrees. I think it's like 110, 115Fahrenheit. After that point, lift your lid off like it is now. Fanny coals, get them red hot and then literally sear the steak for 30 seconds. On each side and you are done. You can eat it straight away and you don't have to rest it. When you sear it, you get big bad boy flames. And this is where all the flavor is. Seriously. And the reason we do this, this is called reverse searing. And just before I move on and show, show you the. The glory shots, mate. The. The beauty that is this steak. The reason we do this is so when you go to a restaurant, you know, and you order a thick steak and they go medium rare, and it's like medium rare right in the middle on the outside. It's all well done. It's gray, it's disgusting, it's tough. It's bullshit. They get the best cuts of meat and they disrespect them. They disrespect them. Ben, this is why I can't go out for a steak mate, because I get better at my own place. And look, if you want to do this at home and you don't have a Weber, first of all, get yourself a Weber. But hey, if the weather's bad outside or whatever, you can just chuck in your oven. 180 degrees. Same thing. Get a cast iron pan, sear it on that, or you can souta in some water and then cast iron pan after that. Brilliant. Right? This is just another daytime one. This one I've actually got, like a cast iron grill again. Bone in ribeye. Just searing that bad boy, just burning the fat. Delicious. There we go. Here's a nighttime shot. Look at that. Who doesn't want that? That's just like caveman. This is what life is about. All right, so here's a cut that I had. I just put some broccolini on the grill as well. Cut into it. Boom. Look at that. Perfect. Medium rare all the way through. Beautiful. Charcoal flavor melt in your mouth. Unbelievable. Here's another one, right? Look at that. Decent potatoes. So this is the potatoes underneath. And look at that. Medium rare the whole way through. None of this, like, gray. Disgusting. Dry. Nah. Beautiful. Here's another one. I just cook some wedges as well. I just cut up some potatoes. I make them into wedges. Another steak. Look at that. Look at that. Ben, tell me that ain't a beautiful steak, son. That is amazing. This is. This is perfection. All right, here we go. I'm pretty sure this is a sirloin. And I've just got some random, like, curried vegetables left over, because why not? And look at that. Perfect all the way through.

Medium rare.

And here we go.

Nah, mate, seriously. I cut this down from about 1500 photos. Ben. I'm so, so into this. Like, this is my true calling, son. So this, this is a tomahawk. Just a really beautiful cut of meat cook that. You can see the big beautiful sear on there. Cut through it. Look at that. Perfection, mate. It is just so delicious. And then here's one more. So this is a final one. This is one of my most favorite cuts of meat. It's called a tri tip. It's basically an ass muscle and it's like a triangle. And the amount of flavor you get in this is insane. It only costs you about 18 bucks a kid kilo. It is so cheap. So you cook it exactly the same way you put your rub on it. With this particular one, I put hot sauce on it, salt, pepper, garlic and a few other things. And I actually smoked this one in the exact same way with your charcoal on the other side and cooked it to medium rare and boom. There you go. Just chop it up and just phenomenal, mate. It is.

I'm just believable for lunch now.

There you go. How to cook the perfect steak. Get amongst it. You've got no excuses. You don't need to be going to restaurants to buy. Buying 120 steaks. Buy your super fancy wagyu marble score, whatever the. For like 30 bucks. Cook it yourself is going to be the best experience you have in your life. Get off your ass. You're all working from home.

Camera rolls just full of steak and steak and memes, mate.

Mate, can you, can you name anything better than steak and memes that you can have on your camera?

Like I'd like to chicken burger and.

Red wine better combo.

There you go. Yeah, yeah. Mine's also got the wine on it as well.

Right.

But the memes, the memes make me happy, mate. And the food keeps me fan burgs.

Really fantastic episode listeners that made us through just the tsunami of steak there. Thank you for listening all the way through. I hope everyone liked the new structure. We. We restructured it.

We at.

We had.

I like the way that you come in and you dog me for the three minutes that I do on steak. And here you are talking about the Goldie and market and security and blabbing off the ages and also, you know what pisses me off? I'm here sitting in 4k ultra HD. You're like bloody 144p. I can barely make out your face. You're blocky as you're cutting out. You still have Internet. You haven't fixed it, mate.

I'll update my Internet and my. When. When you update your face.

Oh, I mate, I shaved off my beard. I cut it. This is a huge upgrade. That's like. Mate, you have to upgrade.

That upgrade was like going from Windows 7 to Windows 98.

Windows 98 was better than Windows 7, mate. I've got to tell you, Windows 98, second edition, that's where it's at. PCs were flying, mate. We need to go back.

The goodies anyway. Let's move on. Great episode. Great episode. Value up front. You learned what it what are the crypto markets doing? We spoke about property strategies. We spoke about PR strategies, how to cook a steak. That was one of the better episodes. Burgers. I actually really liked that. That was good fun. I think people. Hopefully you learn some stuff.

I think so too. And yeah, it's the first time we're trying out. Thanks for bearing with us. I've got a cold so I'm a bit delirious. Thanks for sticking through the housing segment. I could talk about that all day.

And honestly, yeah, we're going to keep going like this. We're going to start doing episode themes as well. So you know what you're getting up front. You're in for a good listen. You're going to get all the good stuff on the back end as well. Thanks for listening in.

You're all champions and as always wanting to get started in the crypto. We we mentioned a lot of things in that episode. Head over Collective Shift, an amazing new security center. Free resources. We've got a great newsletter. We've got some awesome stuff on a YouTube channel as well. You should check out. Just a lot of awesome stuff if you want to get started in crypto or you're already in crypto, you're wanting some more digital analysis on chain analysis, sentiment, staff valuations. Really going to help you save time and make better decisions. Bergs, we launched this new your this is your product launch. The new personalized dashboard. That's epic. I'm not going to lie. You can now track the assets that you're interested in and start to get personalized insights based on what you own. A lot more to come in that realm. Just a lot of things happening. So head over there. Collector Shift IO.

Amazing. And Ben, I just want you to improve on one thing for next episode. Mate. Have a look at this. That is what you look like to me.

How horrendous is that? You're just the blockiest thing in the world. We've talked about you, you know, going in and getting like you know, a better camera, better Internet. That's all I want, mate. I just want someone that shows up with their whole self, thinks about this, thinks about the other person and really brings it all to work. Is that too much to ask?

A blotch of white paint.

And you barely move as well. Like normally, like if you're moving in your blocky, that's okay, but literally you'll move like every five seconds. Like the audio is kind of okay, but it is just, it is horrendous, mate. It is. Jesus. I can't work under these conditions.

Into the union, mate. Into the union. Fair work.

Well, mate, you're, you're pretty much your video games at zero at the moment, so only up from here, mate.

Well, we'll leave it there. See you next week, guys.

All right, let's wrap up there.

Bye bye.